65th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

Yesterday Jane and I celebrated our 65^th Wedding anniversary. It was a good time to give thanks, reflect and look forward.  Jane and I had a long and wonderful conversation in the context of the traditional Christian wedding vows plus a list or two of what it takes to have a good marriage. A few of the thoughts that struck us are listed below.

We promised to live together in the holy estate of matrimony. Our time together has been made holy by a gracious, generous, forgiving God. We are aware that our spiritual insights, beliefs and values have both remained firm and have significantly changed. We are much more open and less dogmatic. We are more comfortable with mystery and not in need of certainty about non-essentials. We are less provincial and feel a stronger shared unity with all of God’s people and the whole creation.

We have experienced poverty and riches. We recalled how in our early years of marriage Jane took our meager check, cashed it, and carefully placed the appropriate amount in individual envelopes, even $1.00 for postage. We have always tithed and more and as the years went by included more and more “non-church” causes in our designations. We realized that after ten years of marriage we were still making less than $300.00 a month (plus housing) and now we live in a wonderful retirement community where our monthly fee is well in excess of our annual salary in the first ten years.

Like others, we experienced together sickness and health, both to an extreme extent. Our daughter Liz was once not expected to live through Christmas Eve to the next day. We flew Jane home from Hong Kong while she was in a virtual coma. We watched our son Dave’s face be destroyed by cancer and held his hand as he breathed his last. And at age 88 both of us still travel the country without cane, wheel chair or oxygen tanks,

 

We have learned to love and cherish each other with a love that grows deeper with each passing year even as the sexual expression of that love which we so much anticipated and enjoyed for so many years is now sometimes more a memory than a current reality.

Our personal intercommunication has been strengthened by our ever deeper commitment and practice of active listening, non-blameful confrontation. win-win problem  solving and honest sharing of values and beliefs.

Family members including spouses and grandchildren are sources of joy, pride, new insights, challenges and satisfactions.

Colleagues and work experiences enriched us. Sixty-five years ago both of us anticipated spending our professional careers in the elementary classrooms of Lutheran parochial schools. That would, of course, also have been a very satisfying calling, but we have been blessed by all kinds of other opportunities for service from California to New York to tens of cities and countries around the world, ranging from Hong Kong to Helsinki to Pakistan and places in between.

The marriage vows conclude with “as long as you both shall live.” How long that will be is, of course, unknown to us. Yet this we do know. It’s has been and is great. We are blessed beyond what we ever imagined possible on that Saturday afternoon in Zion Lutheran Church, Ft. Wayne, Indiana. 65 years ago.

Reflections on a Blessed and Happy Life No. 27: Off to College

  My17th summer was exciting and full. I graduated from high school, worked full-time at a café (while renting a room near-by) played on a very good softball team and a mediocre baseball team. We celebrated VE Day, were excited and also worried by atom bombs being dropped in Japan, We rejoiced and celebrated_VJ Day and then off to college.

I headed for what was then called Concordia Teachers College-River Forest, IL (now Concordia University Chicago. There was never any consideration for even a minute that I would go anywhere else. My father had graduated from there 25 years earlier-and that is where I was headed.

Mother faithfully helped me get ready. She found a big “steamer trunk” which she could use to send my “stuff.” She saw to it that I go\t my first pair of gloves and even an overcoat. (I hated it then and still don’t like wearing one.)

I contacted four other Texans who were also headed to R.F. and coordinated rail travel The railroad people told us not to travel over Labor Day as the end-of the-war traffic was overwhelming everything. On the day of travel Mother gave me my most important carry-on; namely food for the journey. There was no way on earth we would have the funds to eat in the train diner. Mother fried chicken (having butchered the chicken herself) made lots of homemade bread. Stuffed in a couple dozen cookies and secured it all in a good sturdy bag.

Dad had his last minute instructions, which included a few words that were not characteristic of him at all. He said  “Melvin, when my father put me on the train to go to River Forest when I was 15 years old he said to me ‘If you are expelled, don’t bother coming home’.” He left it at that. I think he wanted me to take this business seriously-but it was just not in his oh so kind nature to threaten me with self-expulsion from the family.

The train was full. The ride long. We changed trains in St. Louis. As we went toward our new coach (of course, we had no reserved seats) I walked outside the train cars and looked in for a few seats. As we went by one car I said to my buddies “Oh. There are a few seats in that car, but we can’t go there. That car is for colored only!” The porter alongside me heard those words and almost roared at me, “Get in that car young man, you are no longer in the South. From here we all ride together!”

Dad had given us detailed instruction on how to get from Chicago’s Union Station to River Forest via the El and then a walk of a couple miles.. But when we got to the train depot some relatives of one of our roommates were there. They drove us to R.F. They were great.

College orientation went smoothly. Of course, I noticed that in contrast to the boys-only student body of my high school there were “girls” on this campus. We did not pay much attention to them nor they to us-, except for a couple of them who took more to my strange Texas cowboy boots than to me and that was okay too.

Our dorm arrangement was that 8 of us shared two rooms, one for study and one for sleeping. The eight of us got along together well. I sadly report that of those 8 I am the sole survivor.

I am absolutely positive I did not telephone my folks that I had safely arrived on campus. That would have been unthinkable. I do hope that as I settled in I said a special prayer of thanks to my whole family as all of them made “Sending Mel off to College“ a family project.

REFLECTIONS ON A BLESSED AND HAPPY LIFE NO 23 WORLD WAR II

As mentioned before, the years of WWII matched almost exactly my years at Concordia Academy for grades 9-12.

Preface: I want to be very clear. World War II was not about me. I did no heroics, performed no great acts, and endured no great personal sacrifice. Compared to so many others my life was easy. Millions suffered and died. Many Americans (and other) families suffered terrible deprivation, pain and loss. Many of my fellows Americans were incredibly brave. They represented me. They saved the USA from enemies. I am the beneficiary of all of this valor, patriotism and sacrifice. So while I reflect upon my life during those days I do so in great humility and clarity of understanding that I had it easy.

‘

My years in high school very nearly match the years of the USA being officially at war in WWII.  I entered high school September 5,1941 and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7,1941. Germany surrendered to the allies on May7, 1945; I graduated from high school on May 10,1945 and Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945.

I had gone home for the weekend and was “playing catch” out in our back yard with my siblings on that Dec. 7th afternoon. My father came out and in a very serious voice ordered us all into his “study”. There he informed us that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He knew it meant war and that would have incredible consequences for the world. He had us all sit and join him in prayer.

It immediately came close to home. The son of a neighbor was in the Navy and at Pearl Harbor. He was serving on the US Arizona and we knew it was hit by Japanese bombs…and by New Year’s Day the family had received word that he was officially “missing in action:” We feared the worst. He was eventually declared, “Killed in action.”

In a spirit of patriotism many of the young people enlisted. Soon my Father received confidential letters from the military. We lived in a German community and many of the servicemen from that community volunteered or were chosen to do confidential interpretation, code breaking and similar work. My dad had been their grade school principal and knew that many of them never went to high school. He very carefully documented their expertise in their native German language and vouched for their patriotism.

It became a time for us to follow the news with great interest. We listened to the radio. At Concordia Academy we had only one newspaper available to us in the library and we perused it eagerly.

Soon the streets were filled with men (and a few women) in uniform. Then we all experienced rationing. My parents carefully used their sugar-rationing card to get sugar to can fruits and vegetables. Dad had an A classification for his gasoline allotment and he was always determined to use as little gasoline as possible. No new tires. Old ones were recapped.

The military training activity around us became intensified. When we lived in Walburg we saw tanks rumble by our house on maneuvers from Ft. Hood to Camp Swift. When we moved to San Antonio we were completely amid airmen from all the airbases there. My trips to and from home were all by “hitchhikers thumb.“ The courtesy rule for us non-military was that we would stand at the end of the line so that they would get preference.

Even as there was good news about the Allies advance there was always great anxiety, as we personally knew so many friends and relatives on the front lines. We kept the newspaper maps and articles handy. New names became familiar: Iwo Jima, Anzio, The Dessert Fox, Doolittle, MacArthur, and Eisenhower etc. etc. It was a time of great anxiety always mixed with the hope for an early victory.

REFLECTIONS ON A BLESSED AND HAPPY LIFE  NO.25

  WWII WAR'S END                                                                          

As mentioned previously, the years of WWII matched almost exactly my years at Concordia Academy for grades 9-12. On April 28,1945 Mussolini committed suicide after being captured by our Italian allies. On April 30 Adolph Hitler committed suicide. Germany surrendered on May 8. While we rejoiced over VE Day as we called the victory in Europe, there was still the very heavy fighting and heavy casualties occurring on the Pacific.

 Immediately upon graduation, May 10, I rented a room and went back to work as a waiter at Wukash Brothers Café in Austin. This was a broadening experience for me-especially as I began to interact with fellow wait staff. Almost all were women married to US servicemen. As such they were of a different (if any) faith and they brought with them values, language, and life styles quite different from what I had experienced in rural, German speaking Lutheran Walburg. They also brought the war in the Pacific closer as their spouses were deployed around the world and together we daily looked at the headlines and wondered if these men were still alive.  

In between all the anxieties (and some rejoicing) about the war, I had a great time playing city league softball.  Mr. Peal, a wonderful business owner of a potato chip factory sponsored a team and I played on it. We were good. (Our ball boy later was a star pitcher for the Chicago Cubs.) I made the all-city team and got to play with some experts. The competition was fiercest with teams from the near-by military bases. We were scheduled to play one of them for the city championship on the evening of August 15. But they never showed up. 

They were celebrating VJ Day and the end of World War II. In the second week of August the USA had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on August 15 Japan surrendered. 

There was great and appropriate celebration. We thanked God for what our country had achieved and we were especially mindful of the sacrifices of our service personnel-remembering   their patriotism, valor, courage, dedication- and for many even the giving of their lives. 

Along with the celebrations there was also great sadness and distress. We learned of Auschwitz death camp and the other places were million of Jews had been slaughtered by Germany. As the POWs   came back (especially from the Pacific Theater of Operations), we heard first hand from persons who survived the Bataan Death March and the indescribable torture in Japanese Prisoner of War encampments. Regretfully we also (for me for the first time) heard more about how the USA had "resettled” many thousands of USA citizens who happened to have Japanese ancestry. 

I turned 18 years of age after the end of the war and so did not need to make any decisions around enlistment or being called up for service. However, I was deeply aware of the cost of the war to people all over the world. I thanked God for the victory and noted again the fact that our democracy was safe because of the sacrifice of fellow citizens. I even prayed for our enemies. And joined all those who sought peace on earth midst a fervent plea that there would never again be a world war.

65th Anniversary – Section II: Places

In these day I am recalling my 65 years since I was first commissioned as a teaching minister in the church. The focus of this reflection is the places we have lived. I have actually lived in 14 different apartments or houses during these years. The casual reader would conclude, “Mel was unable to hold a job!.” It is really a bit more complicated. One reason for the different places is because I often lived in “church supplied housing”. So my quarters were determined by church budgets and sometimes even by a committee, which chose an apartment without ever having listened to any of our considerations.

The locations of those houses included California, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New York and Hong Kong. Each had much to love and enjoy. Tracy California in the 1950’s had a population of some 10,000. So I got to know many of the residents and when one walked down Main Street one was likely to be called by name. Hong Kong is my favorite place in all the world. I love the Chinese people. The energy of the place carries one along. The food options are unlimited. The streets are safe. If one has air conditioning (which we did not have) and good solid windows (which we mostly had) then one can ignore the heat, the 96 inches or rain per year or the terrible typhoons. New York comes close to Hong Kong as a favorite and if I had lots of money (and a different wife) I could enjoy living in Hong Kong or New York as my place of choice even for today in retirement. Chicago was great. It has excellent public transportation, great art and entertainment and every imaginable type of food. Ann Arbor, Michigan (even in the tumultuous 60”s) is a place of intellectual stimulation, roads cleared of the worst snow imaginable, and not too far from Frankenmuth chicken dinners. And we now live in San Diego county California by choice. The weather, the multi-ethnic communities, the golf courses, the range of political opinions, the beaches and nearby mountains… It is great!

Of course there are “places” other than just our residences or the cities that contain them. My life has been spent in classrooms. I love teaching. 65 years ago that meant 45 kids in one classroom of 4^th –8^th graders. Later on those classrooms were found in colleges and seminaries in Hong Kong and several USA campuses. I have given the keynote address or lead a workshop in each of the Districts of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and all the Regions of the ELCA.

Work with Effectiveness Training gave me the opportunities to teach or do business or just stop in on places like, Germany, Switzerland, France, Norway, Sweden and best of all Finland. There were plenty challenges (and good people) awaiting me in Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Pakistan.

In retirement I was blessed to lead some tours with incredibly wonderful cadres of friends. These tours took us to China, Tibet, Germany, The Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Brazil, Argentina, Israel and Palestine.

 Places I visited (usually with Jane) just for fun and to be with family and friends hold special niches in my heart. Before we were frightened off by drug wars we had wonderful times in Mexico. Visiting son John and his family in Barcelona, Madrid, Taiwan and England were special. Lena and Ruth Galster were wonderful hosts in Bangkok. And since we were careful not to break the law by chewing gum in public we had a great time in Singapore

Just naming these places stirs up masses of differing feelings. There is admiration for those poor kids who attended our rooftop schools in Hong Kong. All they got was rudimentary stuff of the basic three “rs”, but they took that and became wonderful citizens of the world. I think of the children sitting in out-door schools without textbooks in Pakistan and how they are now being challenged by the Taliban et sim. I admire the great work we witnessed at Christmas Lutheran Church and school in Bethlehem and the God-blessed incredible work of Pr. Raheb. I pray that the improvement in wealth distribution is bringing hope to the many, many poor people I saw in those long lines awaiting treatment in small Wheat Ridge supported clinics in south India and I hope that all of them will some day get the opportunity to just visit and admire the Taj Mahal in the heart of their own country.

None of the above places would be so favorably remembered were it not for Jane, family and friends. Jane has made each of our homes places of refuge from stress, centers of beauty, locales of peace and the abode of love. No matter where else I may have been in the world the thing that kept drawing me forward was the anticipation of being safely home. Even today when she is there and also if by chance some or all of the kids come join us I have no desire to be any place else. For as my family always reminds me “Home is where the heart is.”